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David Lynch is an American director, screenwriter, producer, painter, and composer. Over a lengthy career, he has employed a distinctive and unorthodox approach to narrative filmmaking, which has become instantly recognizable to many audiences and critics worldwide. His films are known for surreal, nightmarish and dreamlike images and meticulously crafted sound design.

Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana and raised throughout the Pacific Northwest and Durham, North Carolina. Intending to become an artist, Lynch attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and made several short films there. After getting a grant from the American Film Institute, he moved to Los Angeles and made his first feature-length film Eraserhead over the next five years with family and friends working in front of and behind the camera. This film brought him to the attention of Mel Brooks who hired him to direct The Elephant Man.

After the commercial and critical failure of science fiction epic Dune, Lynch made Blue Velvet, which was controversial and introduced him into the mainstream, diving critics and audiences alike. He went on to collaborate with television producer Mark Frost on the show Twin Peaks for ABC and it became a popular culture phenomenon. Lynch adapted Barry Gifford’s novel Wild at Heart, which won the Palme d’Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. After the show was canceled in 1991, he followed it up with a prequel entitled, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which flopped at the box office. Lynch received widespread critical and commercial acclaim for Mulholland Drive.

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The Silvertown explosion occurred in Silvertown in West Ham, Essex, England. The blast occurred at a munitions factory which was producing explosives for Britain’s World War I military effort. Approximately 50 tons of TNT exploded, killing 73 people and injuring over 400.

It also caused substantial damage to buildings and property in the local area. This was possibly the largest single explosion to occur in Britain up to that time. The factory was in a highly populated area, but this was obviously not the prime concern for the military authorities. On January 19, 1917, a fire broke out and efforts to put it out were under way when approximately 50 tons of TNT ignited.

The plant was destroyed instantly, as were many nearby buildings, including the Silvertown Fire Station. Debris was strewn for miles around, with red-hot chunks of rubble causing fires. The emergency services immediately became involved in putting out the fires caused by the explosion, treating the wounded, and beginning to repair the damage caused. Thousands were left without a home, requiring temporary accommodation in schools, churches, and other similar places.

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Willie O’Ree is a retired professional ice hockey player, known best for being the first black player in the National Hockey League. He played as a winger for the Boston Bruins. Additionally, he is referred to as the “Jackie Robinson of ice hockey” due to breaking the color barrier in the sport.

O’Ree was called up by the Boston Bruins to replace an injured layer. He was 95% blind in his right eye due to being hit there by an errant puck two years earlier, which normally would have precluded him from playing in the NHL. He managed to keep it secret and made his debut on January 18, 1958 against the Montreal Canadiens, becoming the first black player in league history. He found that racist remarks were much worse in the United States cities than in Toronto and Montreal – the lone Canadian cities with NHL teams.

After O’Ree, there were no other black players in the NHL until fellow Canadian Mike Marson was drafted by the Washington Capitals in 1974. There are 17 black players in the NHL as of the mid-2000s. NHL players are now required to enroll in a diversity training seminar before each season and racially based verbal abuse is punished through suspensions and fines. On January 27, 2008, the NHL honored O’Ree during the 56^th All-Star Game in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Popeye the Sailor is a fictional hero famous for appearing in comic strips and animated films as well as numerous television shows. He was created by Elzie Crisler Segar and first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929.

Although, Segar’s Thimble Theatre strip, first published on December 19, 1919 was in it tenth year when Popeye made his debut, the sailor quickly became the main focus of the strip and Thimble Theatre became one of King Features’ most popular strips during the 1930s. Thimble Theatre was carried on after Segar’s death in 1938 by several writers and artists, including his assistant Bud Sagendorf. The strip, now titled Popeye, continues to appear in first-run installments in Sunday papers, written and drawn by Hy Eisman.

In 1933, Max and Dave Fleischer’s Fleischer Studios adapted the Thimble Theatre characters into a series of Popeye the Sailor theatrical cartoon shorts for Paramount Pictures. These cartoons proved to be among the most popular of the 1930s and the Fleischers continued production through 1957. Since then, Popeye has appeared in comic books, TV cartoons, arcade and video games, and a 1980 live-action film directed by Robert Altman and starring comedian Robin Williams as Popeye.

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Dian Fossey was an American zoologist who completed an extended study of gorilla groups over a period of 18 years. She observed them daily for years in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by famous paleontologist Louis Leakey.

Fossey enrolled in a pre-veterinary course in biology at the University of California, Davis and later transferred to San Jose State College. She subsequently received her PhD from Darwin College, Cambridge for a thesis entitled, “The Behaviour of the Mountain Gorilla” in 1976. Fossey became interested in Africa after seeing photographs and hearing about the continent from a friend who had been there. After taking out a loan in 1963, she embarked on a trip to Africa and met Dr. Louis Leakey.

Leakey talked to Fossey about the work of Jane Goodall and the importance of long term research of the great apes. By 1966, she gained the support of Dr. Leakey and carried out long-term research on the mountain gorillas. She began her field study in the Congo, but by 1967, political upheaval forced her to move to Rwanda. In 1967, she founded the Karisoke Research Center and became an international celebrity, bringing massive publicity to her cause of saving the mountain gorilla from extinction. She was brutally murdered on December 26, 1985.

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Elizabeth Short was an American woman who was the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder. Nicknamed the “Black Dahlia,” she was found severely mutilated on January 15, 1947 in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California. The murder, which remains unsolved, has been the source of widespread speculation as well as several books and film adaptations.

Short was born in Hyde Park, Massachusetts and was raised in Medford by her mother. At age 19, she went to live with her father in Vallejo, California. For six months prior to her death, she remained in the L.A. area. During this time, she lived in several hotels, apartment buildings, rooming houses, and private homes, never staying anywhere for more than a few weeks. Her body was found in a vacant lot, severely mutilated, cut in half, and drained of blood. Her face was slashed from the corners of her mouth toward her ears.

Short received the nickname “Black Dahlia” by newspaper reporters covering the murder as a play on the then-current film The Blue Dahlia. The murder investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department was the largest since the murder of Marion Parker in 1927, and involved hundreds of officers borrowed from other law enforcement agencies. Hundreds of people were considered suspects and thousands were interviewed by police.

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The Human Be-In was a happening in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on the afternoon and evening of January 14, 1967. It was a prelude to the city’s Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a household word as the center of an American counterculture and introduced the word “psychedelic” to suburbia.

The Human Be-In focused the key ideas of the 1960s counterculture: personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralization, communal living, ecological awareness, higher consciousness, and liberal political consciousness. The happening took its name from a chance remark by Michael Bowen made at the Love Pageant Rally. The Human Be-In was announced on the cover of the first issue of the San Francisco Chronicle as “A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In.”

The occasion was a new California law banning the use of the psychedelic drug LSD. Speakers included Dr. Timothy Leary, who set the tone with his famous phrase, “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” and poets like Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Music was provided by a host of local rock bands including Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead. No one was able to agree whether 20,000 or 30,000 people showed up.

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Since his 1955 song “Folsom Prison Blues,” musician Johnny Cash had an interest in performing at a prison. His idea was put on hold until 1967 when personnel changes at Columbia Records put a different executive in charge of producing Cash’s material.

Cash had recently controlled his drug abuse problems and was looking to turn his career around after several years of limited commercial success. backed with June Carter, Carl Perkins, and Cash’s band, the Tennessee Three, Cash performed two shows at Folsom State Prison on January 13, 1968. Cash opened both shows with a rendition of “Folsom Prison Blues” and the concerts contained many songs about prison, songs of despair, a few “slow ballad-type songs,” followed by two novelty songs.

The album release of At Folsom Prison was prepared in four months. Columbia initially invested little into the album or its single “Folsom Prison Blues” because of the label’s efforts to promote pop stars instead of country artists. The single charted but was edited and re-released after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. The new version became a success and the album eventually reached number one on the Top Country Albums chart and number thirteen on the Billboard 200, as well as selling over 500,000 copies.

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The Sicilian revolution of Independence of 1848 occurred in a year replete with revolutions and popular revolts. The revolution of that year is significant because it was one of the first of numerous ones to occur that year; this one resulted in an independent state surviving for 16 months; the constitution was quite advanced for its time; and was a curtain raiser to the end of the Bourbon kingdom.

The seeds of the revolution 1848 were sown prior to the Congress of Vienna in 1812. Post Congress of Vienna, Ferdinand IV of Naples immediately abolished the constitution upon returning the royal court to Naples. The 1848 revolution was substantially organized from, and centered in, Palermo. The popular nature of the revolt is evident in the fact that posters and notices were being handed out in a full three days before the substantive acts of the revolution occurred.

The Sicilian parliament was never able to control the well fortified city of Messina, which ultimately would be used to take back the island by force. It was the city of Messina that held out the longest against Garibaldi’s attack on the island in 1860. Sicily survived as a quasi-independent state for 16 months, with the Bourbon army taking back full control of the island by force.

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His Girl Friday is a 1940 screwball comedy and a remake of the 1931 film The Front Page, itself an adaptation by Charles Lederer, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur of their play of the same name. The “twist” to His Girl Friday is that one of the leading roles was converted from a man to a woman.

The film stars Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell and features Ralph Bellamy. It was directed by Howard Hawks and is noted for the rapid-fire pace of its dialogue. He had a very difficult time casting the lead female role. His first choice was Carol Lombard but Columbia Pictures could not afford her. Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, Margaret Sullivan, Ginger Rogers, and Irene Dunne were offered the role, but turned it down.

His Girl Friday premiered in New York City on January 11, 1940 and went into general release on January 18. The film is noted for the rapid-fire pace of the repartee, using overlapping dialogue to make conversations sound more realistic. The film was ranked #19 on the American Film Institute’s “100 Years, 100 Laughs,” and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

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